Collinson makes the point that my grandson, and his partner pay a lot more tax, proportionately, than I did.
Intrigued to see in that article that his daughter's 'take home pay' from £25,000 gross is £1600 a month. When I was on £25,000, it was only £1500. Admittedly I had higher student loan costs, but not that much higher.
I'm wondering if she's not paying into a pension. That's the only way I can account for the difference. In which case, there's another time bomb right there.
Higher personal allowance?
Why would she have a higher personal allowance than me? Is there an adjustment for London?
You said "when". Assuming you were on that before 2010, the tax profile has changed a lot since then.
Collinson makes the point that my grandson, and his partner pay a lot more tax, proportionately, than I did.
Intrigued to see in that article that his daughter's 'take home pay' from £25,000 gross is £1600 a month. When I was on £25,000, it was only £1500. Admittedly I had higher student loan costs, but not that much higher.
I'm wondering if she's not paying into a pension. That's the only way I can account for the difference. In which case, there's another time bomb right there.
Higher personal allowance?
Why would she have a higher personal allowance than me? Is there an adjustment for London?
You said "when". Assuming you were on that before 2010, the tax profile has changed a lot since then.
My salary only increased beyond £25,000 when I was promoted to deputy head of faculty for the first time at the end of June this year.
Collinson makes the point that my grandson, and his partner pay a lot more tax, proportionately, than I did.
Intrigued to see in that article that his daughter's 'take home pay' from £25,000 gross is £1600 a month. When I was on £25,000, it was only £1500. Admittedly I had higher student loan costs, but not that much higher.
I'm wondering if she's not paying into a pension. That's the only way I can account for the difference. In which case, there's another time bomb right there.
Higher personal allowance?
Why would she have a higher personal allowance than me? Is there an adjustment for London?
You said "when". Assuming you were on that before 2010, the tax profile has changed a lot since then.
My salary only increased beyond £25,000 when I was promoted for the first time at the end of June this year.
In 2010 I was unemployed.
I see, it's easy to assume everyone on here is high flyer. So I'd suggest your point about her not paying into a pension is probably spot on.
Collinson makes the point that my grandson, and his partner pay a lot more tax, proportionately, than I did.
When I moved into a flat in London with two friends - all our parents appalled when they saw the ex council small flat costing us c. 25,000/year. We were delighted to have reduced our commute and thought we had a bargain!
When I first got married in the early 60’s we lived in a small flat over and behind a corner shop just outside Rochdale. The rent was £2 per week, inclusive, and apparently the landlord, who lived next door and ran the corner shop was happy. Our first house in SE Essex afew yars later cost £3000.
I met a colleague in rural Wales whose mortgage was the same as my share of rent. About 700/month i think. Except he had a four bedroom house.
Llandudno and Llangefni are pockets of affluence in areas of high deprivation.
Why? Because they are county towns and a high proportion of their residents are council workers. They have national pay scales and live in the cheapest parts of the country. What's barely a living wage in London is wealth beyond the dreams of avarice in Anglesey.
The moral of this story is, if you are on a national pay scale (i.e. in the public sector) - work where it's cheap to live.
Surely most national employers have national pay scales, even in the private sector, do they not? Does Tesco pay more to stack its shelves in Birmingham than in Bury?
Mr. JohnL, a small part of that is Brown's petty vindictiveness, cutting the PM's salary just before he lost the job.
It is standard for PM's to cut their own salaries. Over time, it adds up. Mrs Thatcher did it (annoying some in her cabinet not married to millionaire businessmen) and so did David Cameron, for all his crocodile tears about Gordon Brown having got there first.
Collinson makes the point that my grandson, and his partner pay a lot more tax, proportionately, than I did.
Intrigued to see in that article that his daughter's 'take home pay' from £25,000 gross is £1600 a month. When I was on £25,000, it was only £1500. Admittedly I had higher student loan costs, but not that much higher.
I'm wondering if she's not paying into a pension. That's the only way I can account for the difference. In which case, there's another time bomb right there.
Higher personal allowance?
Why would she have a higher personal allowance than me? Is there an adjustment for London?
You said "when". Assuming you were on that before 2010, the tax profile has changed a lot since then.
My salary only increased beyond £25,000 when I was promoted for the first time at the end of June this year.
In 2010 I was unemployed.
I see, it's easy to assume everyone on here is high flyer. So I'd suggest your point about her not paying into a pension is probably spot on.
Hmmm.
I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but I would politely suggest that going from unemployed in 2011 to trainee teacher in 2012 to Head of Faculty and interviewed for Assistant Head in a mere five years is a sign of a fairly high flyer.
It's just that teaching is not the best paid of professions.
Collinson makes the point that my grandson, and his partner pay a lot more tax, proportionately, than I did.
Intrigued to see in that article that his daughter's 'take home pay' from £25,000 gross is £1600 a month. When I was on £25,000, it was only £1500. Admittedly I had higher student loan costs, but not that much higher.
I'm wondering if she's not paying into a pension. That's the only way I can account for the difference. In which case, there's another time bomb right there.
Higher personal allowance?
Why would she have a higher personal allowance than me? Is there an adjustment for London?
Posted before your timing quote. But it could be to do with pension contributions.
Mr. JohnL, a small part of that is Brown's petty vindictiveness, cutting the PM's salary just before he lost the job.
It is standard for PM's to cut their own salaries. Over time, it adds up. Mrs Thatcher did it (annoying some in her cabinet not married to millionaire businessmen) and so did David Cameron, for all his crocodile tears about Gordon Brown having got there first.
Except Brown didn't do it when he first came to power; he did it immediately before the 2010 election. In other words: he cut his successor's salary.
Nasty and vindictive about sums that particular move up.
Having thought about this for a bit, it will be an interesting intellectual exercise to wonder who the Guardian actually think of as JAMs, as opposed to who the government sees in that group.
Mrs May won't see young single graduates in London in that category at all, she's targeting Middle England with families and jobs, who have housing but struggle for any more than the basics and the occasional luxury or holiday.
Neither give a rat's arse about the Daily Mail caricature, of the family on £150k paying out school fees and agonising about whether they can afford Christmas in Dubai as well as half term in Courcheval this year!
Middle England is Sleaford, rather than the Great Wen. Houses are quite affordable there:
That is where the JAMs are, in Leaverstan rather than Remania, and certainly not in a taxfree Gulf Emirate.
Worth noting too that the seminal film about the housing crisis in London was made in the Sixties- "Cathy Come Home". There are plenty of rose tinted glasses about this morning.
My parents bought their first house (Kent 1967) 7 years after getting married. In their first flat in London in 1960, they lived on the 4th floor without stairs and a tea chest and orange boxes for table and chairs. When they moved into their new house all their worldly possessions fitted in three tea chests. Standards of living and possessions were very different then.
Housing is indeed very affordable there, if you're on a national pay scale or have a job as a lawyer or doctor. Most people there are probably not so lucky, and see low wages held down by immigration, with low wage service jobs providing most employment.
How did your parents get to their 4th floor flat with no stairs?
General standards of living have of course improved massively over the last fifty years, and metrics such as life expectancy and infant mortality bear almost no relationship to those of our parents' generation.
As @AlastairMeeks points out, the Guardian article that started this conversation is comparing apples with oranges given the ages of the two people under discussion, it's just a Guardian moan about the cost of living in London without suggestion of how to address the problem.
Collinson makes the point that my grandson, and his partner pay a lot more tax, proportionately, than I did.
Intrigued to see in that article that his daughter's 'take home pay' from £25,000 gross is £1600 a month. When I was on £25,000, it was only £1500. Admittedly I had higher student loan costs, but not that much higher.
I'm wondering if she's not paying into a pension. That's the only way I can account for the difference. In which case, there's another time bomb right there.
Higher personal allowance?
Why would she have a higher personal allowance than me? Is there an adjustment for London?
You said "when". Assuming you were on that before 2010, the tax profile has changed a lot since then.
My salary only increased beyond £25,000 when I was promoted for the first time at the end of June this year.
In 2010 I was unemployed.
I see, it's easy to assume everyone on here is high flyer. So I'd suggest your point about her not paying into a pension is probably spot on.
Hmmm.
I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but I would politely suggest that going from unemployed in 2011 to trainee teacher in 2012 to Head of Faculty and interviewed for Assistant Head in a mere five years is a sign of a fairly high flyer.
It's just that teaching is not the best paid of professions.
Apologies, you're right, I didn't mean it quite like that!
I expect the statistics for 1963 and 2016 would tell the same story.
In part the reason that Guardian writer's father would have paid less for his house was that consumer credit and mortgages were very hard to get in the Sixties. My parents had to have a track record of saving with their Building Society for more than 5 years to be eligible for a mortgage. This was a major restraint on house prices.
The migration crisis of the Sixties was outward flow, the "Brain Drain", because so few people saw much future in Britain. I would have been Canadian if my mother had not developed TB in 1968 (picked up on migration visa for Canada) from years of living in substandard housing.
I do not mean to minimise the difficulties of Millenials like Fox jr, but you cannot pick out one aspect of life in the Sixties without taking the whole package. The past is a foreign country, from which we are permenantly exiled.
How did they do it? Sometimes you just have to stand back and admire political brilliance when you see it. Marvel at the cunning and ruthlessness, the clarity of vision. I am talking of course about the Labour Party, which, back in the summer, was presented with the perfect political opportunity. A government in disarray, nay collapse. The Liberal Democrats, which had seemingly ceased to exist. And Ukip leaderless and with its rival candidates punching the hell out of each other.
And from that position, a few short months ago, Labour has managed — incredibly — to render itself absolutely irrelevant to everybody. It is a remarkable achievement. When you consider how divided was our country over the referendum, the feat of alienating both remainers and leavers took some doing — but Jeremy Corbyn was up to the task.
Collinson makes the point that my grandson, and his partner pay a lot more tax, proportionately, than I did.
Intrigued to see in that article that his daughter's 'take home pay' from £25,000 gross is £1600 a month. When I was on £25,000, it was only £1500. Admittedly I had higher student loan costs, but not that much higher.
I'm wondering if she's not paying into a pension. That's the only way I can account for the difference. In which case, there's another time bomb right there.
Higher personal allowance?
Why would she have a higher personal allowance than me? Is there an adjustment for London?
You said "when". Assuming you were on that before 2010, the tax profile has changed a lot since then.
My salary only increased beyond £25,000 when I was promoted for the first time at the end of June this year.
In 2010 I was unemployed.
I see, it's easy to assume everyone on here is high flyer. So I'd suggest your point about her not paying into a pension is probably spot on.
Hmmm.
I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but I would politely suggest that going from unemployed in 2011 to trainee teacher in 2012 to Head of Faculty and interviewed for Assistant Head in a mere five years is a sign of a fairly high flyer.
It's just that teaching is not the best paid of professions.
Apologies, you're right, I didn't mean it quite like that!
Mr. JohnL, a small part of that is Brown's petty vindictiveness, cutting the PM's salary just before he lost the job.
It is standard for PM's to cut their own salaries. Over time, it adds up. Mrs Thatcher did it (annoying some in her cabinet not married to millionaire businessmen) and so did David Cameron, for all his crocodile tears about Gordon Brown having got there first.
Except Brown didn't do it when he first came to power; he did it immediately before the 2010 election. In other words: he cut his successor's salary.
Nasty and vindictive about sums that particular move up.
Yes, Brown's salary cut was by 25% in April 2010, the month before he left office. Vindictive is the right word.
That said, having the PMs salary where it is provides a good benchmark against other public sector salaries, and at a subliminal level at least probably causes some restraint in other departments and public sector bodies.
Mr. JohnL, a small part of that is Brown's petty vindictiveness, cutting the PM's salary just before he lost the job.
It is standard for PM's to cut their own salaries. Over time, it adds up. Mrs Thatcher did it (annoying some in her cabinet not married to millionaire businessmen) and so did David Cameron, for all his crocodile tears about Gordon Brown having got there first.
Except Brown didn't do it when he first came to power; he did it immediately before the 2010 election. In other words: he cut his successor's salary.
Nasty and vindictive about sums that particular move up.
We don't actually know when Brown cut the PM's salary, though as Cameron cut it still further, crocodile tears are unnecessary. According to the Mail, it was not announced until months later, so the cut was not made immediately before the election, as legend has it.
Mr. JohnL, a small part of that is Brown's petty vindictiveness, cutting the PM's salary just before he lost the job.
It is standard for PM's to cut their own salaries. Over time, it adds up. Mrs Thatcher did it (annoying some in her cabinet not married to millionaire businessmen) and so did David Cameron, for all his crocodile tears about Gordon Brown having got there first.
Except Brown didn't do it when he first came to power; he did it immediately before the 2010 election. In other words: he cut his successor's salary.
Nasty and vindictive about sums that particular move up.
Yes, Brown's salary cut was by 25% in April 2010, the month before he left office. Vindictive is the right word.
That said, having the PMs salary where it is provides a good benchmark against other public sector salaries, and at a subliminal level at least probably causes some restraint in other departments and public sector bodies.
Incidentally, to pick up on your earlier point about what would be needed to make you move to London, I was head hunted for a job in as nice part of north London earlier this year. I turned it down after I worked out that I would need a £90,000 salary to maintain my current lifestyle in the area, and even then I would be hard pressed to get a mortgage. That's a headteacher's salary - or maybe a deputy head once London Allowance is slung in. They were offering about £42,000, which on paper was good money but in practice wasn't even half way to what I would have wanted.
And that was even before my pay raise. It's really stunning to think people in London don't realise how inadequate their weighting is compared to the lower cost of living in the provinces. No wonder they have trouble recruiting key workers.
@ydoethur - are there not key worker houses? But I don't know how that works in practice if you then wanted to move elsewhere. It's one of the curious things about the immigration/Brexit debate. The place that is under the most pressure in terms of housing is the place that was most in favour of preserving the status quo.
@ydoethur - are there not key worker houses? But I don't know how that works in practice if you then wanted to move elsewhere. It's one of the curious things about the immigration/Brexit debate. The place that is under the most pressure in terms of housing is the place that was most in favour of preserving the status quo.
I don't know either. However the descriptions from a friend of mine whose first job was in London were not encouraging.
The only one of my cohort to teach and stay in London was a former banker who bought a rather nice house in the 1980s crash. But there are not so many of them in teaching, for some reason.
Incidentally, to pick up on your earlier point about what would be needed to make you move to London, I was head hunted for a job in as nice part of north London earlier this year. I turned it down after I worked out that I would need a £90,000 salary to maintain my current lifestyle in the area, and even then I would be hard pressed to get a mortgage. That's a headteacher's salary - or maybe a deputy head once London Allowance is slung in. They were offering about £42,000, which on paper was good money but in practice wasn't even half way to what I would have wanted.
And that was even before my pay raise. It's really stunning to think people in London don't realise how inadequate their weighting is compared to the lower cost of living in the provinces. No wonder they have trouble recruiting key workers.
My grandson and granddaughter-in-law elect(!) are both newly qualified teachers and they reckon that they’ll need both salaries for some time after marriage. Grandson gets Outer London weighting, gd-i-law elect doesn’t. Incidentally, when I worked in the NHS in Basildon the effect of London weighting, as opposed to OLW was enough to persaude people to stay JUST the other side of the line.
Incidentally, to pick up on your earlier point about what would be needed to make you move to London, I was head hunted for a job in as nice part of north London earlier this year. I turned it down after I worked out that I would need a £90,000 salary to maintain my current lifestyle in the area, and even then I would be hard pressed to get a mortgage. That's a headteacher's salary - or maybe a deputy head once London Allowance is slung in. They were offering about £42,000, which on paper was good money but in practice wasn't even half way to what I would have wanted.
And that was even before my pay raise. It's really stunning to think people in London don't realise how inadequate their weighting is compared to the lower cost of living in the provinces. No wonder they have trouble recruiting key workers.
Increasing London weighting would just worsen the property differentials by pushing up housing costs. The problem of London housing is one of supply over demand.
Housing is actually quite affordable across most of Britain, the problem is lack of high paying work there. Leicester has quite affordable decent quality housing, yet people here have the fourth lowest disposeable income in the UK. Blackburn, Hull and Nottingham are lower. This is where the JAMS are:
She doesn’t have grand faults, just the standard coding errors you must expect if you install a Thames Valley Tory into your system of government.
Readers who don’t know the rich river towns and villages between Windsor and Henley won’t grasp how invulnerable conservative values and conservative culture can feel in the heart of Tory England.
struck me as particularly revealing - replace 'Windsor and Henley' with 'Islington' and 'conservative values and conservative culture' with 'Labour values and Labour culture'.......
But of course, the Islington world view is the correct one......
She doesn’t have grand faults, just the standard coding errors you must expect if you install a Thames Valley Tory into your system of government.
Readers who don’t know the rich river towns and villages between Windsor and Henley won’t grasp how invulnerable conservative values and conservative culture can feel in the heart of Tory England.
struck me as particularly revealing - replace 'Windsor and Henley' with 'Islington' and 'conservative values and conservative culture' with 'Labour values and Labour culture'.......
But of course, the Islington world view is the correct one......
And she's the MP for Maidenhead which, not to put too fine a point on it, is a bit of a dump.
Incidentally, to pick up on your earlier point about what would be needed to make you move to London, I was head hunted for a job in as nice part of north London earlier this year. I turned it down after I worked out that I would need a £90,000 salary to maintain my current lifestyle in the area, and even then I would be hard pressed to get a mortgage. That's a headteacher's salary - or maybe a deputy head once London Allowance is slung in. They were offering about £42,000, which on paper was good money but in practice wasn't even half way to what I would have wanted.
And that was even before my pay raise. It's really stunning to think people in London don't realise how inadequate their weighting is compared to the lower cost of living in the provinces. No wonder they have trouble recruiting key workers.
Increasing London weighting would just worsen the property differentials by pushing up housing costs. The problem of London housing is one of supply over demand.
Housing is actually quite affordable across most of Britain, the problem is lack of high paying work there. Leicester has quite affordable decent quality housing, yet people here have the fourth lowest disposeable income in the UK. Blackburn, Hull and Nottingham are lower. This is where the JAMS are:
Cannock is similar. Even though it's doubled in size in 30 years, there is ample new housing and room to expand, so prices are low. A 3-bed semi with garden and garage is comfortably under £150k.
I'm surprised that Anglesey isn't on your list, but I suppose the low cost of living may offset the low average wage. (Edit - clicking on the link, I think it means 'England' not 'the U.K.'. My mistake.)
Mr. JohnL, a small part of that is Brown's petty vindictiveness, cutting the PM's salary just before he lost the job.
It is standard for PM's to cut their own salaries. Over time, it adds up. Mrs Thatcher did it (annoying some in her cabinet not married to millionaire businessmen) and so did David Cameron, for all his crocodile tears about Gordon Brown having got there first.
Except Brown didn't do it when he first came to power; he did it immediately before the 2010 election. In other words: he cut his successor's salary.
Nasty and vindictive about sums that particular move up.
Almost as nasty & vindictive as obsessing about it more than 5 years later would be...
She doesn’t have grand faults, just the standard coding errors you must expect if you install a Thames Valley Tory into your system of government.
Readers who don’t know the rich river towns and villages between Windsor and Henley won’t grasp how invulnerable conservative values and conservative culture can feel in the heart of Tory England.
struck me as particularly revealing - replace 'Windsor and Henley' with 'Islington' and 'conservative values and conservative culture' with 'Labour values and Labour culture'.......
But of course, the Islington world view is the correct one......
This.
May has an unembarrassed taste for Kipling’s If, The Great British Bake Off, James Bond and MasterChef. Like her supporters, she isn’t remotely edgy, and cannot see anything wrong with parochial and comfortable English life.
The worst mistake since Caesar went to the Senate on the ides of March, or the worst mistake since Hannibal decided not to capture Rome after Cannae?
Or to keep the peace between you and Mr Eagles, the worst mistake since Tiberias Gracchus tried to change the rules so he could be re-elected tribune after his term ended?
Mr. JohnL, a small part of that is Brown's petty vindictiveness, cutting the PM's salary just before he lost the job.
It is standard for PM's to cut their own salaries. Over time, it adds up. Mrs Thatcher did it (annoying some in her cabinet not married to millionaire businessmen) and so did David Cameron, for all his crocodile tears about Gordon Brown having got there first.
Except Brown didn't do it when he first came to power; he did it immediately before the 2010 election. In other words: he cut his successor's salary.
Nasty and vindictive about sums that particular move up.
Almost as nasty & vindictive as obsessing about it more than 5 years later would be..
Our current PM is in a very different situation to Mrs T. I'm too young to remember, but I doubt a Tory MP would have been so rude as to talk about how much the PM's clothes cost. But it's a sign of the times that the likes of Morgan feel no inhibitions when it comes to such things. I don't think the Osbornites have quite acclimatised to the new political order and are lashing out at everything they can.
I thought it was pretty outrageous. Fair enough to disagree on policy but why would you make such a remark about your party leader? Seriously petty and just the sort of thing journalists love.
And yes I think it does have a sexism angle - I wonder how much David Cameron's suit cost...
The context was Mrs May had just given an interview about the JAMs and was it wise to do so wearing £995 trousers doing so.
That was Nicky Morgan's point.
As an aside I think Nicky Morgan is wrong, you don't need to put on the sackcloth and ashes when talking about those less fortunate than yourself, it is the petty, childish response from Mrs May and her staff that is so alarming.
But @rkrkrk is quite right to point out the sexism angle. Nobody mentions how much a male politician's suit costs, do they?
Yes they did. The story is nonsense, other than, if true, it speaks poorly of how the PM has reacted to such petty insurbidination, but there is already a response to dismiss even the petty bit spuriously, which is unecessary. The focus of the story is already on the wrong bit, it doesn't matter what she spends her money on - she may even be very frugal in things other than clothes - so best to ignore that rather than spend effort weakly dismissing it, it'll dismiss itself.
She doesn’t have grand faults, just the standard coding errors you must expect if you install a Thames Valley Tory into your system of government.
Readers who don’t know the rich river towns and villages between Windsor and Henley won’t grasp how invulnerable conservative values and conservative culture can feel in the heart of Tory England.
struck me as particularly revealing - replace 'Windsor and Henley' with 'Islington' and 'conservative values and conservative culture' with 'Labour values and Labour culture'.......
But of course, the Islington world view is the correct one......
She doesn't like foreign cultures apparently.
Although, from my experience (perhaps @NickPalmer can comment) you learn more about the Swiss walking in the moutains than you do on the streets of Basel.
Nicholas Boyle, emeritus professor of German at Cambridge University, has pointed out that only 28% of the population of this country voted to leave the EU. “Should 28% be entitled to compel 72% to do what they want?” he asks. That, he says, is the real constitutional issue.
“The 17 million [Leave voters] represented no one other than themselves. The members of the House of Commons represent all 64 million of us, whether voters or not.” He adds that if it is true that 70% of MPs do not wish to leave the European Union, then they “have every right to feel they more truly represent the views and interests of the country”.
Nicholas Boyle, emeritus professor of German at Cambridge University, has pointed out that only 28% of the population of this country voted to leave the EU. “Should 28% be entitled to compel 72% to do what they want?” he asks. That, he says, is the real constitutional issue.
“The 17 million [Leave voters] represented no one other than themselves. The members of the House of Commons represent all 64 million of us, whether voters or not.” He adds that if it is true that 70% of MPs do not wish to leave the European Union, then they “have every right to feel they more truly represent the views and interests of the country”.
Are the 27% similarly allowed to tell everyone what they should do? Let's face it, those that didn't vote had a chance to vote, and didn't take it. What they think is moot.
He adds that if it is true that 70% of MPs do not wish to leave the European Union, then they “have every right to feel they more truly represent the views and interests of the country”."
What a load of crap. They don't more truly represent the views of the country, as the referendum results showed.
Nicholas Boyle, emeritus professor of German at Cambridge University, has pointed out that only 28% of the population of this country voted to leave the EU. “Should 28% be entitled to compel 72% to do what they want?” he asks. That, he says, is the real constitutional issue.
“The 17 million [Leave voters] represented no one other than themselves. The members of the House of Commons represent all 64 million of us, whether voters or not.” He adds that if it is true that 70% of MPs do not wish to leave the European Union, then they “have every right to feel they more truly represent the views and interests of the country”.
Pointless argument. There is an electorate which comprises a subgroup of the population. That is broadly accepted (and there is a prpceedure for changing the definition of you agree).
Every member of the electorate had the right to vote. If an individual chose not to exercise that right then they can't reasonably complain that they had no input into the outcome.
I don't have any time for Banks, but I guess you could argue that the Soviet Union was a different thing altogether from today's Russians. I don't think I would argue that, but you could...
Pointless argument. There is an electorate which comprises a subgroup of the population. That is broadly accepted (and there is a prpceedure for changing the definition of you agree).
Every member of the electorate had the right to vote. If an individual chose not to exercise that right then they can't reasonably complain that they had no input into the outcome.
But that is not the point he is making.
Millions of people under 18 have had their right to free movement within the EU taken away. They could not vote.
And yes I think it does have a sexism angle - I wonder how much David Cameron's suit cost...
The context was Mrs May had just given an interview about the JAMs and was it wise to do so wearing £995 trousers doing so.
That was Nicky Morgan's point.
As an aside I think Nicky Morgan is wrong, you don't need to put on the sackcloth and ashes when talking about those less fortunate than yourself, it is the petty, childish response from Mrs May and her staff that is so alarming.
The lack of discipline among MPs is extraordinary.
No one benefited fromheadline
Why does anyone big themselves up; it's a trait that's hardly reserved for politicians.
Perhaps it is healthy for politicians to speak freely about things and how they feel: at the very least, such free talking showed the country the real Leadsom and prevented that loathsome individual (*) from becoming PM.
For that reason alone, such interviews are to be commended.
(*) For the sake of some posters' blood pressure, I refrained from using the word 'witch' in connection with her.
Nicky Morgan is a good MP, one of the best of my local ones. She was very much a Cameroon and Remainer.
I do not like May's taste in clothes. Her hunched shoulders and marabou stork*walk mean that clothes hang badly on her. She would benefit from some deportment lessons.
May makes too many enemies in her party and too few friends. Her first cabinet was managed with excessive malice. Morgan and May were at the same cabinet table for years, as was Osborne and Cameron, to whom she owed her position yet did not speak to after becoming PM. A reshuffle was nessecary, but these would all have been useful people for advice. May has been nursing her wrath for years to keep it warm.
It became quickly apparent in how she had the Osborne story leaked - and I presume it was her staff since it made her look good, given he Is so disliked - that she not only was determined to be decisive and forceful as the new pm, forging her own parh not merely following Cameron's, but that she thought Osborne was crap and wanted everyone to know it, since she didn't just sack him and let him attempt to save face and talk needing a fresh direction and all that. Many would support her view of him, but the way some of her initial cheerleaders talked of Cameron and her now, she gives the impression of hating every minute of the last 6 years.
She doesn’t have grand faults, just the standard coding errors you must expect if you install a Thames Valley Tory into your system of government.
Readers who don’t know the rich river towns and villages between Windsor and Henley won’t grasp how invulnerable conservative values and conservative culture can feel in the heart of Tory England.
struck me as particularly revealing - replace 'Windsor and Henley' with 'Islington' and 'conservative values and conservative culture' with 'Labour values and Labour culture'.......
But of course, the Islington world view is the correct one......
And she's the MP for Maidenhead which, not to put too fine a point on it, is a bit of a dump.
I was once in Maidenhead, at the annual dinner of the (don’t laugh) Home Brewing and Winemaking Suppliers Association. Perhaps understandably, although perhaps mistakenly the wines at dinner were from the Associations products, and we were charged £20 a bottle corkage. With, 30 years ago, I thought was excessive! Put me off returning to the town.
She doesn’t have grand faults, just the standard coding errors you must expect if you install a Thames Valley Tory into your system of government.
Readers who don’t know the rich river towns and villages between Windsor and Henley won’t grasp how invulnerable conservative values and conservative culture can feel in the heart of Tory England.
struck me as particularly revealing - replace 'Windsor and Henley' with 'Islington' and 'conservative values and conservative culture' with 'Labour values and Labour culture'.......
But of course, the Islington world view is the correct one......
She doesn't like foreign cultures apparently.
Although, from my experience (perhaps @NickPalmer can comment) you learn more about the Swiss walking in the moutains than you do on the streets of Basel.
Or the salons of Davos.......
As with our first female PM, there's a whole load of snobbery going on.....
@ydoethur - are there not key worker houses? But I don't know how that works in practice if you then wanted to move elsewhere. It's one of the curious things about the immigration/Brexit debate. The place that is under the most pressure in terms of housing is the place that was most in favour of preserving the status quo.
I don't know either. However the descriptions from a friend of mine whose first job was in London were not encouraging.
The only one of my cohort to teach and stay in London was a former banker who bought a rather nice house in the 1980s crash. But there are not so many of them in teaching, for some reason.
Interesting debate. I worked in London for 8 years, public sector key worker. My wage went from 30k to a maximum of £38k despite several promotions, but in reality the wage increases were just keeping up with inflation and by 2013 I realised there was no chance whatsoever of buying a property in London or anywhere near it. And while there was a prospect of more promotions, there was a wage ceiling of £45-50 k in my industry, which means I was effectively locked out of the prospect of homeownership in London. I moved out of the London, commuted for 2 years then took a job locally with a small pay cut. After getting married and with our joint savings and some minor parental assistance I bought a 2 bed property with garden in a nice area, the mortgage payment is a third of my income. I also bought a car. We had a child and can get by if needed on one income. I consider us to be in the top percentile of the JAM's, in that if I lose my job or get ill and can't work then of course we are in deep trouble after a few months. God help us if we need to navigate the benefits system. I calculated if I want to commute back to work in London, or move somewhere closer, to keep this standard of living the wage would need to be 70 - 90k. Not going to happen. If you are a public sector recruiter in London you are recruiting from a pool of people who already own property in London and don't want to move, either that or people who are in their twenties, ambitious and happy to live in houseshares, of which there are enough to keep the industry going. But go anywhere outside of the outer London commuter belt and you can have a reasonably good standard of living and security if you are a public sector worker and have the right skills/experience.
Incidentally, to pick up on your earlier point about what would be needed to make you move to London, I was head hunted for a job in as nice part of north London earlier this year. I turned it down after I worked out that I would need a £90,000 salary to maintain my current lifestyle in the area, and even then I would be hard pressed to get a mortgage. That's a headteacher's salary - or maybe a deputy head once London Allowance is slung in. They were offering about £42,000, which on paper was good money but in practice wasn't even half way to what I would have wanted.
And that was even before my pay raise. It's really stunning to think people in London don't realise how inadequate their weighting is compared to the lower cost of living in the provinces. No wonder they have trouble recruiting key workers.
Without personalising it, there might be the argument that public sector workers outside London address are OVERpaid, while those in and near London are underpaid. As a whole the taxpayer is not getting value for money. They are paying more than they need to get quality staff in one part of the country while not getting what they need in another part.
I don't have any time for Banks, but I guess you could argue that the Soviet Union was a different thing altogether from today's Russians. I don't think I would argue that, but you could...
I wouldn't argue it. Brezhnev was a Ukrainian-born Russian, agreed, but he favoured Russians over any other nationality for his key roles. Indeed, one of the ironies of the Soviet Union is that although it was theoretically neutral in nationality and race matters and indeed had only one unambiguously Russian leader who served for more than two years (Ulyanov) it was quite as forceful in pushing Russification as the Tsars had been.
Mr. JohnL, a small part of that is Brown's petty vindictiveness, cutting the PM's salary just before he lost the job.
It is standard for PM's to cut their own salaries. Over time, it adds up. Mrs Thatcher did it (annoying some in her cabinet not married to millionaire businessmen) and so did David Cameron, for all his crocodile tears about Gordon Brown having got there first.
Except Brown didn't do it when he first came to power; he did it immediately before the 2010 election. In other words: he cut his successor's salary.
Nasty and vindictive about sums that particular move up.
Almost as nasty & vindictive as obsessing about it more than 5 years later would be..
Not obsessing. Just pointing out facts.
Obsession is choosing which fact(s) to point out. Over and over.
I don't have any time for Banks, but I guess you could argue that the Soviet Union was a different thing altogether from today's Russians. I don't think I would argue that, but you could...
Plus it was the Americans that chose to side with the Taliban and precursor to Al-Qaida in Afghanistan.
She doesn’t have grand faults, just the standard coding errors you must expect if you install a Thames Valley Tory into your system of government.
Readers who don’t know the rich river towns and villages between Windsor and Henley won’t grasp how invulnerable conservative values and conservative culture can feel in the heart of Tory England.
struck me as particularly revealing - replace 'Windsor and Henley' with 'Islington' and 'conservative values and conservative culture' with 'Labour values and Labour culture'.......
But of course, the Islington world view is the correct one......
And she's the MP for Maidenhead which, not to put too fine a point on it, is a bit of a dump.
I was once in Maidenhead, at the annual dinner of the (don’t laugh) Home Brewing and Winemaking Suppliers Association. Perhaps understandably, although perhaps mistakenly the wines at dinner were from the Associations products, and we were charged £20 a bottle corkage. With, 30 years ago, I thought was excessive! Put me off returning to the town.
I don't have any time for Banks, but I guess you could argue that the Soviet Union was a different thing altogether from today's Russians. I don't think I would argue that, but you could...
I wouldn't argue it. Brezhnev was a Ukrainian-born Russian, agreed, but he favoured Russians over any other nationality for his key roles. Indeed, one of the ironies of the Soviet Union is that although it was theoretically neutral in nationality and race matters and indeed had only one unambiguously Russian leader who served for more than two years (Ulyanov) it was quite as forceful in pushing Russification as the Tsars had been.
I was just thinking - admittedly in a devil's advocate frame of mind - that it might be his closeness to the current regime, rather than his lack of historical knowledge, that underlies the tweet.
Nicholas Boyle, emeritus professor of German at Cambridge University, has pointed out that only 28% of the population of this country voted to leave the EU. “Should 28% be entitled to compel 72% to do what they want?” he asks. That, he says, is the real constitutional issue.
“The 17 million [Leave voters] represented no one other than themselves. The members of the House of Commons represent all 64 million of us, whether voters or not.” He adds that if it is true that 70% of MPs do not wish to leave the European Union, then they “have every right to feel they more truly represent the views and interests of the country”.
Pointless argument. There is an electorate which comprises a subgroup of the population. That is broadly accepted (and there is a prpceedure for changing the definition of you agree).
Every member of the electorate had the right to vote. If an individual chose not to exercise that right then they can't reasonably complain that they had no input into the outcome.
Well quite. There are remoAner arguments I have sympathy with, particularly with hardcore leavers and some former remain allies pretending if we don't get hardest Brexit that is basically ignoring the referendum, but suddenly deciding absolute majority is needed, not even a majority of eligible voters who choose to vote? Come off it.
I like that it specifies a professor pointed it out. Such stunning insight, professor.
If they want to respond seriously, someone could say it's hardly in the interests of the 64million to ignore the vote given the chaos that would cause, the kids can always campaign to rejoin the eu.
Incidentally, to pick up on your earlier point about what would be needed to make you move to London, I was head hunted for a job in as nice part of north London earlier this year. I turned it down after I worked out that I would need a £90,000 salary to maintain my current lifestyle in the area, and even then I would be hard pressed to get a mortgage. That's a headteacher's salary - or maybe a deputy head once London Allowance is slung in. They were offering about £42,000, which on paper was good money but in practice wasn't even half way to what I would have wanted.
And that was even before my pay raise. It's really stunning to think people in London don't realise how inadequate their weighting is compared to the lower cost of living in the provinces. No wonder they have trouble recruiting key workers.
Without personalising it, there might be the argument that public sector workers outside London address are OVERpaid, while those in and near London are underpaid. As a whole the taxpayer is not getting value for money. They are paying more than they need to get quality staff in one part of the country while not getting what they need in another part.
That's also a possibility, which unfortunately breaks down when you realise how hard it is to recruit teachers in some areas because of flat salaries - e.g. would you teach in Hartlepool (class sizes 37, difficult to control, appalling conditions) when you could teach in Rutland or Herefordshire (average class size 26, behaviour good) for the same money?
My answer would be that salary scales are not all they're cracked up to be and schools should have more freedom to pay staff what they think they're worth.
The elephant in all of this is that for the last 10-15 years there has been a serious and increasing shortage of teachers, which is about to spike nastily due to the cack-handed attempts to close off university routes into teaching.
Pointless argument. There is an electorate which comprises a subgroup of the population. That is broadly accepted (and there is a prpceedure for changing the definition of you agree).
Every member of the electorate had the right to vote. If an individual chose not to exercise that right then they can't reasonably complain that they had no input into the outcome.
But that is not the point he is making.
Millions of people under 18 have had their right to free movement within the EU taken away. They could not vote.
Who represents them?
The same was true of my friend who was born in 1962. He's had to wait all this time to get a vote on our membership of the EU.
Pointless argument. There is an electorate which comprises a subgroup of the population. That is broadly accepted (and there is a prpceedure for changing the definition of you agree).
Every member of the electorate had the right to vote. If an individual chose not to exercise that right then they can't reasonably complain that they had no input into the outcome.
But that is not the point he is making.
Millions of people under 18 have had their right to free movement within the EU taken away. They could not vote.
Who represents them?
16/17 yer olds would have needed to vote Remain by 80%-20%, with a turnout of 80% for the result to have changed.
At the end of the day, those under 18 don't get to vote. While it is right that they are represented in Parliament, I don't see how their position is any different from the many more millions of over 18s who similarly lost that right.
I don't have any time for Banks, but I guess you could argue that the Soviet Union was a different thing altogether from today's Russians. I don't think I would argue that, but you could...
I wouldn't argue it. Brezhnev was a Ukrainian-born Russian, agreed, but he favoured Russians over any other nationality for his key roles. Indeed, one of the ironies of the Soviet Union is that although it was theoretically neutral in nationality and race matters and indeed had only one unambiguously Russian leader who served for more than two years (Ulyanov) it was quite as forceful in pushing Russification as the Tsars had been.
I was just thinking - admittedly in a devil's advocate frame of mind - that it might be his closeness to the current regime, rather than his lack of historical knowledge, that underlies the tweet.
I don't have any time for Banks, but I guess you could argue that the Soviet Union was a different thing altogether from today's Russians. I don't think I would argue that, but you could...
Plus it was the Americans that chose to side with the Taliban and precursor to Al-Qaida in Afghanistan.
Exactly. That is how a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden came to end up in that part of the world.
It was the West, viewing the conflict as a Cold War struggle, that aided the growth of the Mujahideen.
Mr. Doethur, conquering Rome post-Cannae was impossible. The city had an enormous population and strong walls. Hannibal's army was too large to feed easily, but not large enough to overwhelm the massive and militant population of Rome. He had neither siege engines nor engineers. People who criticise him for not attacking Rome fail to understand these things.
[There is an argument that Rome might have psychologically crumbled and come to terms, but given the day after Cannae the field upon which Hannibal's victorious army was camped was sold for the full price, this seems optimistic beyond the bounds of reason].
I don't have any time for Banks, but I guess you could argue that the Soviet Union was a different thing altogether from today's Russians. I don't think I would argue that, but you could...
I agree Russia is a different beast from the Soviet Union. But if I could pick more recent years for Russian deliberate destabilisation of the world. Is 2014 to 2016, and continuing.
I don't have any time for Banks, but I guess you could argue that the Soviet Union was a different thing altogether from today's Russians. I don't think I would argue that, but you could...
Plus it was the Americans that chose to side with the Taliban and precursor to Al-Qaida in Afghanistan.
Yes, as regards the history that is of course a rather important point.
She doesn’t have grand faults, just the standard coding errors you must expect if you install a Thames Valley Tory into your system of government.
Readers who don’t know the rich river towns and villages between Windsor and Henley won’t grasp how invulnerable conservative values and conservative culture can feel in the heart of Tory England.
struck me as particularly revealing - replace 'Windsor and Henley' with 'Islington' and 'conservative values and conservative culture' with 'Labour values and Labour culture'.......
But of course, the Islington world view is the correct one......
She doesn't like foreign cultures apparently.
Although, from my experience (perhaps @NickPalmer can comment) you learn more about the Swiss walking in the moutains than you do on the streets of Basel.
Or the salons of Davos.......
As with our first female PM, there's a whole load of snobbery going on.....
I dislike snobbery of any variety - it's one of the most ugly traits in my view.
Collinson makes the point that my grandson, and his partner pay a lot more tax, proportionately, than I did.
Intrigued to see in that article that his daughter's 'take home pay' from £25,000 gross is £1600 a month. When I was on £25,000, it was only £1500. Admittedly I had higher student loan costs, but not that much higher.
I'm wondering if she's not paying into a pension. That's the only way I can account for the difference. In which case, there's another time bomb right there.
Higher personal allowance?
Why would she have a higher personal allowance than me? Is there an adjustment for London?
You said "when". Assuming you were on that before 2010, the tax profile has changed a lot since then.
My salary only increased beyond £25,000 when I was promoted to deputy head of faculty for the first time at the end of June this year.
In 2010 I was unemployed.
Wow. I knew teachers were poorly paid, but still.im on more than that and I'm just a clerk.
I don't have any time for Banks, but I guess you could argue that the Soviet Union was a different thing altogether from today's Russians. I don't think I would argue that, but you could...
Plus it was the Americans that chose to side with the Taliban and precursor to Al-Qaida in Afghanistan.
If you haven't read Charlie Wilson's War, it's superb and filled with insight from an insider grinding an axe about blue bloods. The film is terrible trivia in comparison.
Nicholas Boyle, emeritus professor of German at Cambridge University, has pointed out that only 28% of the population of this country voted to leave the EU. “Should 28% be entitled to compel 72% to do what they want?” he asks. That, he says, is the real constitutional issue.
“The 17 million [Leave voters] represented no one other than themselves. The members of the House of Commons represent all 64 million of us, whether voters or not.” He adds that if it is true that 70% of MPs do not wish to leave the European Union, then they “have every right to feel they more truly represent the views and interests of the country”.
Nicholas Boyle, emeritus professor of German at Cambridge University, has pointed out that only 28% of the population of this country voted to leave the EU. “Should 28% be entitled to compel 72% to do what they want?” he asks. That, he says, is the real constitutional issue.
“The 17 million [Leave voters] represented no one other than themselves. The members of the House of Commons represent all 64 million of us, whether voters or not.” He adds that if it is true that 70% of MPs do not wish to leave the European Union, then they “have every right to feel they more truly represent the views and interests of the country”.
Pointless argument. There is an electorate which comprises a subgroup of the population. That is broadly accepted (and there is a prpceedure for changing the definition of you agree).
Every member of the electorate had the right to vote. If an individual chose not to exercise that right then they can't reasonably complain that they had no input into the outcome.
"I strongly disagree with the result of the referendum. Here are some reasons why I think it should be ignored."
Nicholas Boyle, emeritus professor of German at Cambridge University, has pointed out that only 28% of the population of this country voted to leave the EU. “Should 28% be entitled to compel 72% to do what they want?” he asks. That, he says, is the real constitutional issue.
“The 17 million [Leave voters] represented no one other than themselves. The members of the House of Commons represent all 64 million of us, whether voters or not.” He adds that if it is true that 70% of MPs do not wish to leave the European Union, then they “have every right to feel they more truly represent the views and interests of the country”.
Nicholas Boyle, emeritus professor of German at Cambridge University, has pointed out that only 28% of the population of this country voted to leave the EU. “Should 28% be entitled to compel 72% to do what they want?” he asks. That, he says, is the real constitutional issue.
“The 17 million [Leave voters] represented no one other than themselves. The members of the House of Commons represent all 64 million of us, whether voters or not.” He adds that if it is true that 70% of MPs do not wish to leave the European Union, then they “have every right to feel they more truly represent the views and interests of the country”.
Pointless argument. There is an electorate which comprises a subgroup of the population. That is broadly accepted (and there is a prpceedure for changing the definition of you agree).
Every member of the electorate had the right to vote. If an individual chose not to exercise that right then they can't reasonably complain that they had no input into the outcome.
But that is not the point he is making.
Millions of people under 18 have had their right to free movement within the EU taken away. They could not vote.
Who represents them?
They are still represented. We can guess how they'd have voted but they didn't have the right so it would be absurd to stymie the result based on that. It includes millions of toddlers for instance, who will grow up post eu,perhaps with a free movement deal but probably not, perhaps with us doing well and the eu not. Such young people might well be pleased we are not In The eu, despite the young today being very for. Unlikely, you might say, but there's no way to know.
Nicholas Boyle, emeritus professor of German at Cambridge University, has pointed out that only 28% of the population of this country voted to leave the EU. “Should 28% be entitled to compel 72% to do what they want?” he asks. That, he says, is the real constitutional issue.
“The 17 million [Leave voters] represented no one other than themselves. The members of the House of Commons represent all 64 million of us, whether voters or not.” He adds that if it is true that 70% of MPs do not wish to leave the European Union, then they “have every right to feel they more truly represent the views and interests of the country”.
It is not going to end well if people believe their vote has been stolen by mainly, privileged people who can find the means to go to the Supreme Court. They should be careful what they wish for.
Nicholas Boyle, emeritus professor of German at Cambridge University, has pointed out that only 28% of the population of this country voted to leave the EU. “Should 28% be entitled to compel 72% to do what they want?” he asks. That, he says, is the real constitutional issue.
“The 17 million [Leave voters] represented no one other than themselves. The members of the House of Commons represent all 64 million of us, whether voters or not.” He adds that if it is true that 70% of MPs do not wish to leave the European Union, then they “have every right to feel they more truly represent the views and interests of the country”.
I don't have any time for Banks, but I guess you could argue that the Soviet Union was a different thing altogether from today's Russians. I don't think I would argue that, but you could...
Pethaps, but I doubt he's made such a distinction - oh I meant they didn't do it in 01, not that their precursor had never done it .
Pointless argument. There is an electorate which comprises a subgroup of the population. That is broadly accepted (and there is a prpceedure for changing the definition of you agree).
Every member of the electorate had the right to vote. If an individual chose not to exercise that right then they can't reasonably complain that they had no input into the outcome.
But that is not the point he is making.
Millions of people under 18 have had their right to free movement within the EU taken away. They could not vote.
Who represents them?
The same was true of my friend who was born in 1962. He's had to wait all this time to get a vote on our membership of the EU.
Yep, no one born after 1957 got a chance to vote on membership of the EU until this year. We had all its idiocies and problems imposed on us for 44 years.
Our current PM is in a very different situation to Mrs T. I'm too young to remember, but I doubt a Tory MP would have been so rude as to talk about how much the PM's clothes cost. But it's a sign of the times that the likes of Morgan feel no inhibitions when it comes to such things. I don't think the Osbornites have quite acclimatised to the new political order and are lashing out at everything they can.
I thought it was pretty outrageous. Fair enough to disagree on policy but why would you make such a remark about your party leader? Seriously petty and just the sort of thing journalists love.
And yes I think it does have a sexism angle - I wonder how much David Cameron's suit cost...
The context was Mrs May had just given an interview about the JAMs and was it wise to do so wearing £995 trousers doing so.
That was Nicky Morgan's point.
As an aside I think Nicky Morgan is wrong, you don't need to put on the sackcloth and ashes when talking about those less fortunate than yourself, it is the petty, childish response from Mrs May and her staff that is so alarming.
The lack of discipline among MPs is extraordinary.
No one benefited from that interview except Nicky Morgan feeling important and the Sun getting a cheap front page.
Why do politicians feel the need to big themselves up: they should be there to serve their constituents and the country, not make bitchy remarks about colleagues in search of a headline
Nicky Morgan has been acting in a childish, huffy and petulant manner since she was sacked, which she clearly feels was a travesty.
She's shown a total lack of class. She should take a lesson (believe it or not) from George Osborne who, whilst also sacked and on manoeuvres of his own on Brexit, is, so far, playing it clean in public.
It is not going to end well if people believe their vote has been stolen by mainly, privileged people who can find the means to go to the Supreme Court. They should be careful what they wish for.
We can hope people won't believe that as it won't be true, only parliament can take the vote away, should the current challenge succeed.
Nicholas Boyle, emeritus professor of German at Cambridge University, has pointed out that only 28% of the population of this country voted to leave the EU. “Should 28% be entitled to compel 72% to do what they want?” he asks. That, he says, is the real constitutional issue.
“The 17 million [Leave voters] represented no one other than themselves. The members of the House of Commons represent all 64 million of us, whether voters or not.” He adds that if it is true that 70% of MPs do not wish to leave the European Union, then they “have every right to feel they more truly represent the views and interests of the country”.
Nicholas Boyle, emeritus professor of German at Cambridge University, has pointed out that only 28% of the population of this country voted to leave the EU. “Should 28% be entitled to compel 72% to do what they want?” he asks. That, he says, is the real constitutional issue.
“The 17 million [Leave voters] represented no one other than themselves. The members of the House of Commons represent all 64 million of us, whether voters or not.” He adds that if it is true that 70% of MPs do not wish to leave the European Union, then they “have every right to feel they more truly represent the views and interests of the country”.
Nicholas Boyle, emeritus professor of German at Cambridge University, has pointed out that only 28% of the population of this country voted to leave the EU. “Should 28% be entitled to compel 72% to do what they want?” he asks. That, he says, is the real constitutional issue.
“The 17 million [Leave voters] represented no one other than themselves. The members of the House of Commons represent all 64 million of us, whether voters or not.” He adds that if it is true that 70% of MPs do not wish to leave the European Union, then they “have every right to feel they more truly represent the views and interests of the country”.
Mr. JohnL, a small part of that is Brown's petty vindictiveness, cutting the PM's salary just before he lost the job.
It is standard for PM's to cut their own salaries. Over time, it adds up. Mrs Thatcher did it (annoying some in her cabinet not married to millionaire businessmen) and so did David Cameron, for all his crocodile tears about Gordon Brown having got there first.
Except Brown didn't do it when he first came to power; he did it immediately before the 2010 election. In other words: he cut his successor's salary.
Nasty and vindictive about sums that particular move up.
Almost as nasty & vindictive as obsessing about it more than 5 years later would be..
Not obsessing. Just pointing out facts.
Obsession is choosing which fact(s) to point out. Over and over.
Collinson makes the point that my grandson, and his partner pay a lot more tax, proportionately, than I did.
Intrigued to see in that article that his daughter's 'take home pay' from £25,000 gross is £1600 a month. When I was on £25,000, it was only £1500. Admittedly I had higher student loan costs, but not that much higher.
I'm wondering if she's not paying into a pension. That's the only way I can account for the difference. In which case, there's another time bomb right there.
Higher personal allowance?
Why would she have a higher personal allowance than me? Is there an adjustment for London?
You said "when". Assuming you were on that before 2010, the tax profile has changed a lot since then.
My salary only increased beyond £25,000 when I was promoted to deputy head of faculty for the first time at the end of June this year.
In 2010 I was unemployed.
Wow. I knew teachers were poorly paid, but still.im on more than that and I'm just a clerk.
When I got my first job in 2013, my starting salary was £21,588. It rose a little the following year, up a band, but I also had a teaching and learning allowance (TLR) as Head of Subject that took it up to about £24,000. (These were traditionally separate pieces of pay bolted on top of basic salary, although this is now slowly changing.) I was raised one band again the following year to take me to £25,000. I then had a slight basic pay increase this year, plus a hefty rise in TLR for first deputy head and then head of faculty. So I'm now on over £30,000. The basic salary for a new teacher is about £1,000 more than in 2013, in line with inflation.
Automatic pay increases have now been abolished and teachers have to show they are deserving of being moved to the next grade. This has caused some resentment as (1) it's a lot of extra work to prove it and (2) teachers almost always automatically improve as time goes on because like all skills you get better with practice.
If you are interested, salary scales are set out in this document, including London weighting:
Nicholas Boyle, emeritus professor of German at Cambridge University, has pointed out that only 28% of the population of this country voted to leave the EU. “Should 28% be entitled to compel 72% to do what they want?” he asks. That, he says, is the real constitutional issue.
“The 17 million [Leave voters] represented no one other than themselves. The members of the House of Commons represent all 64 million of us, whether voters or not.” He adds that if it is true that 70% of MPs do not wish to leave the European Union, then they “have every right to feel they more truly represent the views and interests of the country”.
I find it incredible that so many eminent academics are willing to embarrass themselves like this.
How about addressing the points made?
The points made were completely disingenuous. A public referendum was held on the subject on June 23rd, the result was decisive and will be implemented by the government if they wish to be re-elected.
Nicholas Boyle, emeritus professor of German at Cambridge University, has pointed out that only 28% of the population of this country voted to leave the EU. “Should 28% be entitled to compel 72% to do what they want?” he asks. That, he says, is the real constitutional issue.
“The 17 million [Leave voters] represented no one other than themselves. The members of the House of Commons represent all 64 million of us, whether voters or not.” He adds that if it is true that 70% of MPs do not wish to leave the European Union, then they “have every right to feel they more truly represent the views and interests of the country”.
I find it incredible that so many eminent academics are willing to embarrass themselves like this.
How about addressing the points made?
Given that the points have no validity why bother? Neither you nor the author are going to accept that they are fundamentally wrong both legally and philosophically. So you can just go on living in your bitter little world where your bright shining future has been stolen by those nasty old demi-dead. Meanwhile the rest of us will get on with living in reality.
Comments
In 2010 I was unemployed.
Bah. If I'd stuck £100 on Verstappen I would be.
I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but I would politely suggest that going from unemployed in 2011 to trainee teacher in 2012 to Head of Faculty and interviewed for Assistant Head in a mere five years is a sign of a fairly high flyer.
It's just that teaching is not the best paid of professions.
Nasty and vindictive about sums that particular move up.
How did your parents get to their 4th floor flat with no stairs?
General standards of living have of course improved massively over the last fifty years, and metrics such as life expectancy and infant mortality bear almost no relationship to those of our parents' generation.
As @AlastairMeeks points out, the Guardian article that started this conversation is comparing apples with oranges given the ages of the two people under discussion, it's just a Guardian moan about the cost of living in London without suggestion of how to address the problem.
The migration crisis of the Sixties was outward flow, the "Brain Drain", because so few people saw much future in Britain. I would have been Canadian if my mother had not developed TB in 1968 (picked up on migration visa for Canada) from years of living in substandard housing.
I do not mean to minimise the difficulties of Millenials like Fox jr, but you cannot pick out one aspect of life in the Sixties without taking the whole package. The past is a foreign country, from which we are permenantly exiled.
And from that position, a few short months ago, Labour has managed — incredibly — to render itself absolutely irrelevant to everybody. It is a remarkable achievement. When you consider how divided was our country over the referendum, the feat of alienating both remainers and leavers took some doing — but Jeremy Corbyn was up to the task.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/bravo-screaming-lord-corbyn-you-alienate-the-52-and-the-48-xwztgqnsq
That said, having the PMs salary where it is provides a good benchmark against other public sector salaries, and at a subliminal level at least probably causes some restraint in other departments and public sector bodies.
*goes back to laying the draw*
Incidentally, to pick up on your earlier point about what would be needed to make you move to London, I was head hunted for a job in as nice part of north London earlier this year. I turned it down after I worked out that I would need a £90,000 salary to maintain my current lifestyle in the area, and even then I would be hard pressed to get a mortgage. That's a headteacher's salary - or maybe a deputy head once London Allowance is slung in. They were offering about £42,000, which on paper was good money but in practice wasn't even half way to what I would have wanted.
And that was even before my pay raise. It's really stunning to think people in London don't realise how inadequate their weighting is compared to the lower cost of living in the provinces. No wonder they have trouble recruiting key workers.
PM lines up IDS to replace Boris: Theresa May set to invite former work and pensions secretary back to Cabinet after his passionate 'hard' Brexit speech
Iain Duncan Smith is being lined up for a return to the Cabinet
He is 'first in line' for promotion if one of the 'three Brexiteers' leaves
These are Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox
The only one of my cohort to teach and stay in London was a former banker who bought a rather nice house in the 1980s crash. But there are not so many of them in teaching, for some reason.
Incidentally, when I worked in the NHS in Basildon the effect of London weighting, as opposed to OLW was enough to persaude people to stay JUST the other side of the line.
Housing is actually quite affordable across most of Britain, the problem is lack of high paying work there. Leicester has quite affordable decent quality housing, yet people here have the fourth lowest disposeable income in the UK. Blackburn, Hull and Nottingham are lower. This is where the JAMS are:
http://m.leicestermercury.co.uk/spending-power-4th-lowest/story-19191982-detail/story.html
She doesn’t have grand faults, just the standard coding errors you must expect if you install a Thames Valley Tory into your system of government.
Readers who don’t know the rich river towns and villages between Windsor and Henley won’t grasp how invulnerable conservative values and conservative culture can feel in the heart of Tory England.
struck me as particularly revealing - replace 'Windsor and Henley' with 'Islington' and 'conservative values and conservative culture' with 'Labour values and Labour culture'.......
But of course, the Islington world view is the correct one......
When it appears in the Daily as opposed to Remainer Sunday Mail I might believe it a little more.....
I'm surprised that Anglesey isn't on your list, but I suppose the low cost of living may offset the low average wage. (Edit - clicking on the link, I think it means 'England' not 'the U.K.'. My mistake.)
May has an unembarrassed taste for Kipling’s If, The Great British Bake Off, James Bond and MasterChef. Like her supporters, she isn’t remotely edgy, and cannot see anything wrong with parochial and comfortable English life.
Describe wide swathes of the country.
The worst mistake since Caesar went to the Senate on the ides of March, or the worst mistake since Hannibal decided not to capture Rome after Cannae?
Or to keep the peace between you and Mr Eagles, the worst mistake since Tiberias Gracchus tried to change the rules so he could be re-elected tribune after his term ended?
Although, from my experience (perhaps @NickPalmer can comment) you learn more about the Swiss walking in the moutains than you do on the streets of Basel.
Nicholas Boyle, emeritus professor of German at Cambridge University, has pointed out that only 28% of the population of this country voted to leave the EU. “Should 28% be entitled to compel 72% to do what they want?” he asks. That, he says, is the real constitutional issue.
“The 17 million [Leave voters] represented no one other than themselves. The members of the House of Commons represent all 64 million of us, whether voters or not.” He adds that if it is true that 70% of MPs do not wish to leave the European Union, then they “have every right to feel they more truly represent the views and interests of the country”.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/nov/27/brexit-of-course-economic-forecasts-bad-no-plan
He adds that if it is true that 70% of MPs do not wish to leave the European Union, then they “have every right to feel they more truly represent the views and interests of the country”."
What a load of crap. They don't more truly represent the views of the country, as the referendum results showed.
Every member of the electorate had the right to vote. If an individual chose not to exercise that right then they can't reasonably complain that they had no input into the outcome.
If that's true, his nickname is T Rex
Millions of people under 18 have had their right to free movement within the EU taken away. They could not vote.
Who represents them?
As with our first female PM, there's a whole load of snobbery going on.....
I worked in London for 8 years, public sector key worker. My wage went from 30k to a maximum of £38k despite several promotions, but in reality the wage increases were just keeping up with inflation and by 2013 I realised there was no chance whatsoever of buying a property in London or anywhere near it. And while there was a prospect of more promotions, there was a wage ceiling of £45-50 k in my industry, which means I was effectively locked out of the prospect of homeownership in London.
I moved out of the London, commuted for 2 years then took a job locally with a small pay cut. After getting married and with our joint savings and some minor parental assistance I bought a 2 bed property with garden in a nice area, the mortgage payment is a third of my income. I also bought a car. We had a child and can get by if needed on one income. I consider us to be in the top percentile of the JAM's, in that if I lose my job or get ill and can't work then of course we are in deep trouble after a few months. God help us if we need to navigate the benefits system.
I calculated if I want to commute back to work in London, or move somewhere closer, to keep this standard of living the wage would need to be 70 - 90k. Not going to happen.
If you are a public sector recruiter in London you are recruiting from a pool of people who already own property in London and don't want to move, either that or people who are in their twenties, ambitious and happy to live in houseshares, of which there are enough to keep the industry going. But go anywhere outside of the outer London commuter belt and you can have a reasonably good standard of living and security if you are a public sector worker and have the right skills/experience.
I like that it specifies a professor pointed it out. Such stunning insight, professor.
If they want to respond seriously, someone could say it's hardly in the interests of the 64million to ignore the vote given the chaos that would cause, the kids can always campaign to rejoin the eu.
My answer would be that salary scales are not all they're cracked up to be and schools should have more freedom to pay staff what they think they're worth.
The elephant in all of this is that for the last 10-15 years there has been a serious and increasing shortage of teachers, which is about to spike nastily due to the cack-handed attempts to close off university routes into teaching.
At the end of the day, those under 18 don't get to vote. While it is right that they are represented in Parliament, I don't see how their position is any different from the many more millions of over 18s who similarly lost that right.
BREAKING: Death toll in Cairo cathedral bombing rises to 20
It was the West, viewing the conflict as a Cold War struggle, that aided the growth of the Mujahideen.
[There is an argument that Rome might have psychologically crumbled and come to terms, but given the day after Cannae the field upon which Hannibal's victorious army was camped was sold for the full price, this seems optimistic beyond the bounds of reason].
And by spouting off like this on topics they obviously know very little about... They devalue their colleagues who do have expertise.
Anyone know what's happening to him?
She's shown a total lack of class. She should take a lesson (believe it or not) from George Osborne who, whilst also sacked and on manoeuvres of his own on Brexit, is, so far, playing it clean in public.
It's just the subject has now moved on, and in an even bigger way.
It's surely a valid criticism of Brown?
Mr. Labour, I agree. Most people, including a lot of Remain voters, will think "We've voted; get on with it."
If we end up not leaving or having a departure in name only, that'll aggravate a large part of the electorate, who may take their votes elsewhere.
Automatic pay increases have now been abolished and teachers have to show they are deserving of being moved to the next grade. This has caused some resentment as (1) it's a lot of extra work to prove it and (2) teachers almost always automatically improve as time goes on because like all skills you get better with practice.
If you are interested, salary scales are set out in this document, including London weighting:
https://www.teachers.org.uk/sites/default/files2014/2016-17-pay-scale-points-joint-advice-final-0_0.pdf
Please bear in mind also that most NQTs work on average a 60 hour week, and most teachers in the middle work over 50 hours a week.